My Italian is minimal, but the output says that the phrase is to be converted completely to lower case (miniscule as opposed to capitalized).

ele9, your code's formatting is a problem. When we write code, we need to make it as readable as possible, which is why we keep each statement on a separate line and why we indent the code. It is more for your own benefit that you make your code readable, because you are the one who needs to be able to read it. Read this article on Wikipedia, Indent Style. I recommend the Allman style.

In other words, it appears to work and produces the expected output. Is there an input string that it doesn't work for? If so, then please tell us what that input phrase is so we can test it. The only problem I can see is if the input phrase is longer than 19 characters.